The Big-Town Round-Up eBook

FOREWORD

The driver of the big car throttled down. Since
he had swung away from the dusty road to follow a
wagon track across the desert, the speedometer had
registered many miles. His eyes searched the
ground in front to see whether the track led up the
brow of the hill or dipped into the sandy wash.

On the breeze there floated to him the faint, insistent
bawl of thirsty cattle. The car leaped forward
again, climbed the hill, and closed in upon a remuda
of horses watched by two wranglers.

The chauffeur stopped the machine and shouted a question
at the nearest rider, who swung his mount and cantered
up. He was a lean, tanned youth in overalls,
jumper, wide sombrero, high-heeled boots, and shiny
leather chaps. A girl in the tonneau appraised
with quick, eager eyes this horseman of the plains.
Perhaps she found him less picturesque than she had
hoped. He was not there for moving-picture purposes.
Nothing on horse or man held its place for any reason
except utility. The leathers protected the legs
of the boy from the spines of the cactus and the thorns
of the mesquite, the wide flap of the hat his face
from the slash of catclaws when he drove headlong through
the brush after flying cattle. The steel horn
of the saddle was built to check a half-ton of bolting
hill steer and fling it instantly. The rope,
the Spanish bit, the tapaderas, all could justify
their place in his equipment.

“Where’s the round-up?” asked the
driver.

The coffee-brown youth gave a little lift of his head
to the right. He was apparently a man of few
words. But his answer sufficed. The bawling
of anxious cattle was now loud and persistent.

The car moved forward to the edge of the mesa and
dropped into the valley. The girl in the back
seat gave a little scream of delight. Here at
last was the West she had read about in books and seen
on the screen.

This was Cattleland’s hour of hours. The
parada grounds were occupied by two circles
of cattle, each fenced by eight or ten horsemen.
The nearer one was the beef herd, beyond this—­and
closer to the mouth of the canon from which they had
all recently been driven—­was a mass of
closely packed cows and calves.

The automobile swept around the beef herd and drew
to a halt between it and the noisier one beyond.
In a fire of mesquite wood branding-irons were heating.
Several men were busy branding and marking the calves
dragged to them from the herd by the horsemen who were
roping the frightened little blatters.

It was a day beautiful even for Arizona. The
winey air called potently to the youth in the girl.
Such a sky, such atmosphere, so much life and color!
She could not sit still any longer. With a movement
of her wrist she opened the door and stepped down
from the car.

A man sitting beside the chauffeur turned in his seat.
“You’d better stay where you are, honey.”
He had an idea that this was not exactly the scene
a girl of seventeen ought to see at close range.